@alexchapman
I've used that term long before discord was a thing 
Trying to figure out if that makes me old. Where I spent the majority of my "childhood" the cell network worked as "caller pays" for the fees. So if you didn't have credits on your SIM, you'd send a "missed call" to the other person and if they could cover the cost they'd call you back. This was also known as "pinging".
And then, of course, the simple nettools ping utility to see if a device is responsive on a network.